The invention relates to a non-woven liner composition useful in the manufacture of flexible disk assemblies.
Magnetic media is used for storage of data and other information in computer readable form. Such media is usually in the form of a flexible or floppy disk and is housed within a disk jacket. Disk jackets are often lined with a fibrous material that is in contact with the disk. The fibrous material, or liner, is intended to protect the disk from damage and contamination from dust and other debris. The liner also serves to clean contaminants from the disk surface.
Dust and other contaminants can cause dropout errors in which information is either not read from or written to the disk, or is improperly read from or written to the disk. The jacket forms a substantially closed environment for housing the disk. The jacket keeps most dust and debris particles from entering the interior of the jacket and contacting the disk. Nevertheless, some particles of dust or other debris may still find their way to the disk, and the liner acts to remove such particles. Moreover, the liner provides a low friction surface that contacts and protects the disk as it rotates within the jacket during use.
Most flexible disk liners are manufactured from a non-woven fabric, but there is considerable variety in the materials used to manufacture the liner, and in the liner construction. Rayon, polyester, and other polymeric fibers are commonly used for manufacturing non-woven liner materials.
The fibers that form the non-woven fabric can be bonded together in different ways to form the liner. One common bonding method is by heat bonding or thermobonding, where thermal energy is applied at various points to fuse individual fibers together, thus forming a liner. Another bonding technique is known as latex or chemical bonding where a polymer latex or emulsion is applied to a fiber web to form the liner. Combinations of thermobonding and latex bonding can also be used. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,414,597; 4,586,606; and 4,655,348 disclose various disk liner materials formed through a thermal bonding technique. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,998,176; 5,060,105; and 5,122,919 disclose various disk lining materials manufactured through a combination of chemical and thermal bonding.
Latex or chemical bonded liners are desirable in that they are less prone to fray and contribute debris to the magnetic media within a flexible disk assembly. One perceived drawback of such liners, at least from an aesthetic standpoint, is that they tend to be relatively stiff. Latex or chemical bonded liners also have a relatively high air porosity. As a result, they can be difficult to use with automated disk assembly lines in which the liner is transferred by vacuum or suction to a disk jacket. Due to the inherently high air permeability of such a liner, it can be difficult to pick up and transfer liners through the application of suction. It would thus be advantageous to maintain the desirable properties of latex or chemical bonded liners while improving their aesthetics and rendering them more amenable to use in automated disk assembly lines.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a chemically bonded, non-woven disk liner having a reduced stiffness. Another object of the invention is to provide a chemically bonded, non-woven disk liner having a significantly reduced air permeability. It is also an object of the invention to provide a chemically bonded, non-woven disk liner that effectively cleans and protects magnetic media within a flexible disk assembly. Other objects of the invention will be apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon reading the following disclosure.